I'd rather write one good book than ten mediocre ones.

I love the tradition of Dickens, where even the most minor walk-on characters are twitching and particular and alive.

Everything takes me longer than I expect. It's the sad truth about life

Always remember, the person we’re really working for is the person who’s restoring the piece a hundred years from now. He’s the one we want to impress.

Sometimes it's about playing a poor hand well.

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.

The storytelling gift is innate: one has it or one doesn't. But style is at least partly a learned thing: one refines it by looking and listening and reading and practice - by work.